by canan marasligil
www.readmyworld.nl
Interesting and thoughtful essay, Adrien; thank you for posting the link. The author, a translator, writes that “...when an opportunity arises to publish a work that tackles the black experience, it is of immense importance to go out and find a translator from the existing pool of talented black voices within the target language. In a context like this one, ignoring this option is choosing to not care.”
Although there is much in the essay I otherwise find compelling (I agree with much of what she says especially about the possibility (likelihood) that this was purely a venal business decision), I disagree with this premise. Why is the “black experience” so much more more important than any other? This is what this writer is implicitly urging on the sole apparent grounds that the black experience is unique. I agree that it is. Of course it is.
But so is every other experience. What is so
sui generis about the black experience that it demands a black translator—as if all black experience is the same? Indeed, Amanda Gorman's experience is likely to be substantially different from that of her own (single) mother.
The writer is claiming that the black experience is so much more unique than any other experience that it
requires a black person to serve as intermediary. As I suggested a moment ago, black experience is--like all human experience--enormously varied and distinct. That a black writer might have a black translator is no guarantee that the translator’s experience will be the same as the writer’s. Indeed, making blackness a requirement
belittles the black experience, suggesting implicitly that there is a single "black experience." There are few enough good translators as it is; to now impose the additional requirements that the translator not only be a good translator, but also be young. And female. And familiar with the spoken word tradition. (Does that diminish the work of any translator of Homer who is not an academic specialist in the oral tradition, specifically the Greek oral tradition?) And share a background (as if that were even remotely possible). And this. And that.
But I return to my point: why is the black experience unique? Why is the indelible--dare I say “unique”--experience of war, for example, any less demanding? Can someone who didn't experience war really truly understand what a writer, writing about that experience, went through? Why is the experience of living, say, through the Stalinist (or Red Guard) purges, any less demanding? Why is the Hispanic experience, or the immigrant Hmong (or any other), experience any less deserving of an “understanding” translator? Or a translator who has a similar background (whatever on earth that might be)? What, in short, is so incredibly, remarkably unique about the black experience that it should be treated different than any other experience?
All experience is unique. There is no one—no one—on earth who can bring the same background to a translation that an author brings to her work.
I am sympathetic to the need for a sensitive translator, for a nuanced understanding of the text. But that is true for
any text. Requiring a similarly situated translator, claiming that only such a translator can do justice to or understand what the writer is saying strikes me as not only shortsighted but, indeed, offensive and lacking a true understanding of human experience.